Burnier, the Photographer who loved Apsaras

Raymond Burnier was one of the very first photographers to showcase and reveal the beauty of India’s great temples.

Nothing suggested that this precocious, idle Swiss heir would go on to become a pioneer of photography of Indian temples. An unexpected encounter in the summer of 1931 with Alain Daniélou – the son of a minister and brother of a future cardinal, but estranged from his family – would set him on a journey around the world. A first journey to the borders of Afghanistan; then came the call of India. The Sun Temple at Konarak, in 1935, offered him a revelation through the sculptures of the Apsaras, the celestial nymphs.
Sometimes travelling by caravan across the subcontinent, sometimes staying in a palace in Benares, the two friends devoted themselves to their passions: for Burnier, the architecture and sculpture of the temples; for Daniélou, the study of Sanskrit, philosophy and music. Several books would emerge from this relationship, which was as personal as it was professional, notably Faces of Medieval India (1950), Divinised Eroticism (1962) and The Hindu Temple (1977). And from the Metropolitan Museum in New York to the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, various solo exhibitions would bear witness to the photographer’s sensitive eye.
Alongside the French version of book (Burnier, le photographe amoureux des apsaras), Infolio is publishing Voyage en Inde médiévale, a magnificent album by the Burnier-Daniélou duo, which partly draws on (images and texts) three previous works (1950, 1962, 1977).

In 2027, an exhibition of photographs taken by Raymond Burnier of Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize in Literature, and his centre in Santiniketan will be held in Kolkata. There are plans to take the exhibition to Paris afterwards.

Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters (France), Jean Pierre Pastori is the biographer of the dancer Patrick Dupond, the fashion designer Robert Piguet, the painter Christian Bérard and the art publisher Harry Kessler. He has published a history of the cabaret Le Bœuf sur le toit and interviews with the conductor Charles Dutoit and the choreographer Roland Petit. He served as chairman of the Béjart Ballet Lausanne and is currently chairman of the Alain Daniélou Foundation.
This book marks his fourth publication in the « Presto » series, translated into English for the first time.